The present invention concerns an equipment which washes, disinfects, dries and stimulates automatically the dairy cow-teats before milking.
In order to assure a greater hygiene and a better quality of milk and allow a following work and seasoning of dairy products, it is necessary to reduce the content of pathogen elements like spores, germs, bacteria etc. which are present in the dairy cow-udders: they stay in the orifice of the teat and enter in contact with milk when it is left out of the udder.
This trend is underlined by recent normatives which on one side take care for the consumers health and on the other side they offer incentives and economical prizes to milk producers who supply a product with high bacteriological characteristics.
In order to cancel the milk contamination it is necessary to make an accurate and complete cleaning of the whole dairycow-teat, from the basis of the udder to the tip of the teat, included the sphynctere. Actually this operation is made through mechanical equipments, apart from doing it manually.
One of these is described in a French patent No. FR 2 559 351, about a device composed of two parallel counterrotating brushes with an horizontal axis, placed in a carrier, near an opening where the teat is sucked in by the rotation effect of the above-mentioned brushes. This system includes as well two holed pipes placed on the side of the brushes to allow water and disinfectant solution to exit and an handling for a manual case.
This equipment has a problem: it does not wash enough the teat because the teat-basis introduction is limited by the distance between the brush-axis; in addition to this it does not allow the washing of the tip of the teat. The teat itself may be completely washed by moving the system up and down, with a rotation on the left and on the right and this causes a great loss of time and the worker is required to pay a lot of attention.
A second equipment is described in the European patent application No. EP 0 399 132-A1.
It concerns an automatic teat-washer for dairy cows, including two counterrotating brushes similar to those of the French patent, which have a sucking action and move the teat against the deviation roller and the third horizontal axis brush, placed under the two other brushes, this third one allows a better cleaning of the tip of the teat. This system is completed by a feeding water-circuit and spray of disinfectant solution and by an handle for the worker, separated from the washing part, with inside a motor and a water flow control device.This equipment, even if it tries to solve the problem of the cleaning of the tip of the teat, is not completely resolutive in fact it may happen that the action of the third brush , when there are long and soft teats, leads the extreme parts of the teat between the deviation roller and the third brush in a position similar to the position of the teat between the two brushes, so that the cleaning action of the tip and of the sphynctere is made by the third brush.
This system does not solve the problem of the teat-basis washing and obliges the worker to make up and down movements to clean all the lateral surface of the teat itself.
A third equipment is known in the Italian patent application No. MI 91A001377.
This equipment consists in a housing with an opening for the teat-introduction inside which are placed two couples of counterrotating brushes placed one upon the other, where the first exercises a sucking action and the second a push to wash the tip of the teat.
A fourth equipment is known from the document U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,346.
This patent discloses a milk "let-down" stimulating apparatus also using, at the same time, as a teat cleaning apparatus.
The apparatus comprises an upwardly opening cup including a lower inlet for upwardly directing spray jets of fluid therein to. The interior of the cup includes radially inwardly projecting bristle-type blades for effecting a scrubbing action on the exterior of an associated teat in response to spray jets of liquid being upwardly directed onto the blades and the associated teat from the cup lower inlet, and the upper axial end of the cup includes a circumferentially extending zone of upwardly projecting flexible blades for contacting the udder area immediately surrounding the associated teat and tactilly stimulating the udder to facilitate quick and complete milk "let-down".
This equipment has the drawback that the teat is only locally scrubbed by the projecting blades caused to oscillate by the spray jets of liquid.
To clean more effectively teats, the apparatus must be moved up and down, since the cup-like brush is fixed in a main body handled by the user.
In correspondence of the opening of the housing, it is active a ring rotating brush, placed on top of these two counterrotating brushes, aiming at cleaning the teat-basis.
On this ring-brush are fixed some bristles extending radially towards the centre of the opening itself, leaving a free passage for the teat. The equipment is able to dry the teat after the washing through a stop of the liquid and through the bristle--rotation prosecution without water.
This equipment, being surely more effective in the washing of the teat-basis, has always some unsolved problems.
In fact the washing of the teat-basis is effective only if you have an exact correspondence between the ring rotating--brush diameter and the teat-basis, then it is important that the worker makes some up and down washing movements.
These movements are more necessary during the drying phase, in order to avoid that the brushes,rotating without water without disinfectant solution and always in the same position, ray cause on the very soft teat skin some abrasions.
A fourth equipment is known from the document U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,346.
This patent discloses a milk "let-down" stimulating apparatus also using, at the same time, as a teat cleaning apparatus.
The apparatus comprises an upwardly opening cup including a lower inlet for upwardly directing spray jets of fluid therinto. The interior of the cup includes radially inwardly projecting bristle-type blades for effecting a scrubbing action on the exterior of an associated teat in response to spray jets of liquid being upwardly directed onto the blades and the associated teat from the cup lower inlet, and the upper axial end of the cup includes a circumferentially extending zone of upwardly projecting flexible blades for contacting the udder area immediately surrounding the associated teat and tactilely stimulating the udder to facilitate quick and complete milk "let-down".
This equipment has the drawback that the teat is only locally scrubbed by the projecting blades caused to oscillate by the spray jets of liquid.
To clean more effectively teats, the apparatus must be moved up and down, since the cup-like brush is fixed in a main body handled by the user.
The aim of the present invention is to avoid the above-mentioned inconvenients.